Sub­ject: Brief Expla­na­tion On Pos­si­ble Hail Dam­age And What To Do

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Homeowner,

Dur­ing the evening of May 6, 2015, a thun­der­storm brought hail as large as 1.75 inches to sev­eral neigh­bor­hoods in the west­ern parts of Fair­fax County. You may have noticed signs from roof­ing com­pa­nies pop­ping up through­out your neigh­bor­hood. The fact that the “storm chasers” have arrived can be a good indi­ca­tion that your area is involved. Many of these “storm spe­cial­ists” sub­scribe to inter­net hail reports that quickly alert them to areas that may have sig­nif­i­cant damage.

Relax! Your home is prob­a­bly not in immi­nent dan­ger. While sig­nif­i­cant sized hail can dam­age the shin­gles, sid­ing and gut­ters; tear win­dow screens and dent many roof vents, the sit­u­a­tion is not an imme­di­ate threat and your roof will prob­a­bly not leak. In this brief let­ter, I will give some sug­ges­tions on how to pro­ceed with the eval­u­a­tion of the pos­si­ble dam­ages to your home with local roof­ing com­pa­nies who will be here for many years after the “storm­ers” have moved on to another hail opportunity.

Usu­ally there is a two year statue if lim­i­ta­tions on report­ing this dam­age to the insur­ance com­pany. Your insur­ance com­pany will already be aware of the storm and may have dis­patched addi­tional adjusters to the area. Mar­shall Roof­ing, Sid­ing, and Win­dows has been ser­vic­ing Fair­fax County since 1980 and has assisted local home­own­ers through at least 4 major hail events dur­ing the past 35 years. You do have a lit­tle time and don’t need to rush to find the first con­trac­tor that knocks on your door.

If you think you may have dam­age, the first step would be to have one of our esti­ma­tors pro­vide you with a free eval­u­a­tion of your roof, sid­ing, and gut­ters to deter­mine if a report needs to be made to the insur­ance com­pany. Remem­ber, each claim report can raise your pre­mi­ums so most of us don’t want to file a claim unless it’s nec­es­sary. Our esti­ma­tors will let you know if they find dam­age and give you guid­ance on how to pro­ceed through the process. We may be able to meet an adjuster at your house to pro­vide roof access and to point out pos­si­ble dam­age. Some insur­ance com­pa­nies may require that you sign a form autho­riz­ing Mar­shall Roof­ing to rep­re­sent you in this claim. This will enable us to work directly with the adjuster to make sure their adjust­ment is cor­rect includ­ing the num­ber of square feet of roof­ing mate­ri­als, local require­ments for ice pro­tec­tion, etc.

After the adjuster makes this eval­u­a­tion he will pre­pare an adjust­ment report, usu­ally using a pro­gram such as Xac­ti­mate, list­ing the allowance for the var­i­ous aspects of the dam­age. Usu­ally a large por­tion of the allowance will be held back until the work is done. This will show up as depre­ci­a­tion, but this money is usu­ally released when the work is completed.

I hope this infor­ma­tion has been help­ful to you, and please let us know if we can be of assis­tance with your storm damage.

Thanks, Troy D. Marshall

Pres­i­dent Mar­shall Roof­ing Inc.

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